Hentai Game Portal Nutaku Expands Into Virtual Reality

Lauren Orsini
, ContributorI write about the business of fandom.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Nutaku

With VR, you can get to know this elf extremely well.

With nearly every new technology, there is an adult component first. Online porn, for example, was one of the Internet’s first applications, and remains one of its most popular. Now it’s the driving force behind some of the earliest interactive games that harness virtual reality (VR) technology.

Nutaku, a portal for playing 18+ games with sexy animated characters, also called hentai games, announced its expansion into VR last week with two titles that run on compatible PCs with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive support.

The two titles, SexBot: Quality Assurance Simulator and Elven Love: Naughty Rituals, include VR capabilities to immerse players in each game. According to each game’s NSFW sales page, players can directly interact with the characters using a VR headset and handset.

With one set in a futuristic environment and another in a fantasy world, players have options for exploring the adult side of the cutting-edge extent of VR.

“Expanding into different realms of gaming and meeting the demands of our diverse community are Nutaku’s primary goals,” Ben Faccio, Product Manager at Nutaku, said in a press release.

The more ambitious of the two titles is SexBot: Quality Assurance Simulator. Today, players can engage in the form of a virtual male body with a female bot character, but the developers have a variety of different options scheduled for release later this year. A spokesperson told me that future updates will allow for a female player to engage with a male bot, gay and lesbian encounters, and a slew of “accessories” that players can interact with using a VR handset.

“We plan on releasing an update to fully enjoy the game as a female QA testing agent in the upcoming months and in this release, we will not only feature a new playable character, but also new toys and animations to try out,” a Nutaku spokesperson told me.

Hentai VR games are not as new as you'd guess—they began showing up around 2016—but until now, they have been almost exclusively designed for male gamers who want to interact with virtual ladies.

While female gamers make up just 15% of Nutaku’s audience, this inclusion of a variety of play styles is part of a push to make Nutaku friendlier to not only women but players of different sexualities than straight. Leave it to porn to show the diversity of the VR audience, which has historically left women out.

VR isn’t the only new technology that Nutaku is adopting. Both games will be available for players to buy with Verge cryptocurrency. (The same digital currency that other adult sites like Brazzers and Pornhub accept. Why Verge? It claims to be the most anonymous cryptocurrency option.) It’s yet another example of how the porn industry is willing to adopt the latest technology long before it becomes mainstream.